Pierrot, Dog of Belgium

by Walter A. Dyer

At length they came to the dog market. Four or five hundred dogs of all ages and sizes and colours lay dozing or stood pulling at their leashes. There were big, strong dogs like Luppe; alert black Schipperkes; Brussels Griffons, with faces like those of little bearded old men; Belgian sheep dogs with erect, pointed ears, short-haired brown fellows and beautiful long-haired black ones; all sorts of dogs from Great Danes to ridiculous little Dachshunds. There were capable-looking work dogs; mournful-eyed mothers; swaggering young bloods proclaiming loudly their desire for battle; awkward, blundering, adorable four-month-olds, and fuzzy little babies that wabbled on their sprawling legs as though made of jelly. Henri saw a dozen dogs that would have suited him perfectly, but Père Jean was apparently more difficult to please, for he went from group to group without making a selection. At last he told Henri that he could not find the sort of dog he wanted and that it was better to go home without any than take one that would not turn out well.

Henri looked down the row of assuredly desirable dogs and his lip began to tremble a little. So Père Jean, instead of taking Henri home at once, bought some cakes for their dinner and told him he should remain to hear the grand concert in the afternoon, which pleased Henri so much that he forgot his disappointment.

At noon there was a great hubbub and bustle in the Grande Place, for the market was over and all the vendors must be out of there at once. In the afternoon the Regimental Band came in its wonderful uniforms and played stirring music in the kiosk until the shadows began to lengthen and Henri grew very weary.

It had been a wonderful day and Henri fell asleep that night with gay pictures dancing before his eyes and music sounding in his ears. This was happiness enough for little Henri, but Père Jean had not found the dog he was after. He knew the value of the right kind of dog and he would have nothing else.

So Père Jean made a journey one day to fat Auguste Naets, the butcher of Vilvorde, who was famous for the dogs he bred. Auguste bragged much about these dogs. Their blood, he said, ran away back into the Middle Ages to the boarhounds of the Dukes of Brabant. Matins, he called them; and it is true that for a hundred years, when other men had grown careless of their breeding, Auguste’s father and grandfather and great-grandfather had kept the breed pure, so that when the National Federation for the Breeding of Draft Dogs was founded a dozen years ago they deemed the Naets strain worthy of a certificate of merit with five red seals attached, which Auguste proudly had framed and hung in his shop.

Of the hundred thousand or more dogs that are used in Belgium as chiens de trait, none were finer than those which Père Jean found in the kennels of Auguste Naets. They were large dogs, with something of the look of the St. Bernard about them, but with smaller heads and more lithe and rangy bodies. In colour they were all sorts of combinations of black, white, and tawny; Auguste held that colour meant nothing to a cart-dog. Their ears were long and drooping and their tails were docked when they were puppies to avoid interference with the harness. They would have been handsomer with long tails, but Auguste was breeding for utility rather than for beauty. There was a time when the dog-owners of Belgium cropped their dogs’ ears to make them stand erect and pointed, but it was found that during their steady work outdoors in winter rain and snow beat into their ears and caused sores and deafness, so that the practice of depriving them of their natural protection was abandoned.

Auguste’s dogs, like others of their breed, were tireless and powerful. They could easily draw a load of 400 pounds, though 200 pounds was usually considered a one-dog load. Three dogs hitched to a 400-pound load could run with it at a steady, rapid trot for miles without apparent weariness.

Père Jean loved dogs, and he could have stayed all day with Auguste in his kennels, but to Auguste business was business, and he at length persuaded Père Jean to pay a good price for a likely looking beggar from the latest litter. That was Pierrot.

“He has the big feet and the large bones,” said Auguste. “That means he will grow large and strong and live for many years, like my Jacques,” and he pointed to the superb sire that headed his kennels.

So Père Jean took the fuzzy, awkward little puppy back to the little tile-roofed cottage he had built for his bride ten years before, and where Henri and wee Lisa had been born.